Lowering his head over hers, his voice a low scratch in his throat that felt so tight he couldn't breathe, he whispered, "I got a feeling that all hell is about to break loose again, and damn if I don't already have one foot in the pit. Then again, I've walked the fine line between heaven and hell all my life. Why should this be any different?"

He tipped his mouth over hers, hesitated, still looking into the dark green spheres of her eyes- waiting, waiting for what?- then he moved his lips over hers with a pressure that forced back her head.

A trembling passed through her. Her hands fluttered then flattened against his shoulders. And although her lips parted allowing him to sweep his tongue inside her, she did not kiss him back. Her eyelids slid closed. A whimper escaped her. She went heavy in his arms as if every bone in her body had liquefied. He was forced to slide one arm around her waist to keep her on her feet.

His mind whirled, intoxicated as hell, not by the whiskey he had imbibed earlier, but by the taste of her on his tongue. A sense of desperation overcame him, as if he'd unwittingly stepped with both feet into that hell pit and realized too late that his soul was doomed. But not only that. Mavney had been right. Whatever bolt of lightning had streaked into that babe's body that storming night burned there still. It jolted him with an intensity that gripped his heart and sent fire streaking through his blood.

Releasing her suddenly, he stepped away.

Slowly, her eyes opened and fixed him with an intensity that held him paralyzed and fighting the insane need to reach for her again. Deep color flushed her face, and for an infinitesimal moment a vulnerability flashed in her eyes that left him feeling as if Boris Wilcox had gut punched him again.

Then she slapped his face, rocking him back on his heels.

Spinning on her bare heels, she ran to the door, flung it open. The rain slashed the trees and ground and the roar and tremble of the river made the tin cup on the floor vibrate with staccato plinks.

Did she expect him to stop her again? he wondered with a mounting sense of frustration and anger- her slap burning his cheek like fire. The wet wind whipped her mass of fiery hair around her shoulders and molded his shirt to her body. The words were there, on the tip of his tongue. Gritting his teeth he forced them back and told himself to let her go. To the very pit of his soul he knew she was trouble. With the taste of her still in his mouth, warming his blood like fine bourbon, he knew if he stopped her now he was a lost man... if he wasn't already.

Yet... she didn't go. Very slowly she turned. Her face shone with rain spray and the fine tendrils of her hair clung to her cheeks red as claw marks upon her white skin. She looked, he thought, like a soul sentenced to die.

Then she closed the door against the rain.

"'Tis irony," came her voice, slightly tremulous. "I've loathed my mother these many years for what she was, for the grief and humiliation she caused my father. She broke his heart. Shattered his sanity. I was a constant reminder of her to him, and I hated her with fresh vigor each time I looked into his eyes and watched his love for me eclipsed by her memory."

Her hair, damp and windblown, tangled with pine needles and the crushed blooms of the jasmine in which they had tumbled, spilled over her shoulders as she moved toward him, releasing the buttons one by one on his shirt. It slid off her shoulders, down her arms, catching at the bend of her elbows. Her breasts were high and full and painted by firelight, her nipples like dusky rosebuds. Chantz felt his mouth go dry. His crotch grew tight- so damn tight he thought he would explode.

Stopping before him, she turned her wide eyes up to his. Her lower lip trembled. Tears shimmered. "Now I find myself desperate enough to sacrifice my body not to mention my self-respect.... And I wonder now what might have happened in my mother's life to drive her to such an indignity.

"I'll do anything," she admitted in a broken whisper.

"Anything you ask if you'll take me away from here. Far away. I have no money with which to barter, Monsieur. But surely there is a way- to convince you?"

She pressed her trembling body against his, rose on her tiptoes and brushed her lips against his- warm, wet, tasting like her tears. As her hands twisted into his hair and drew him into the kiss, he felt as breathless as if he had plunged again into the dangerous river current.

Groaning, he wrapped his arms around her, body hard and inflamed, control obliterated. She tore her mouth from his and gasped, eyes wide and head fallen back, her expression one of bewilderment and surprise; soft French words he could not understand sighed through her lips.

A wave of aching tenderness rolled through him, and something else... The same emotion that had speared him before, warm and protective and... possessive.

Pulling her arms from around his neck, he eased her back, gave her a little shake, then slid the shirt up her arms and over her shoulders, pulled it closed over her breasts. Cradling her chin in the crook of his finger, he tipped back her head so he could look into her confused eyes.

"The next time you offer yourself to a man, darlin', it better be out of love, because nothing is worth this indignity."

A ghost of gratitude touched her eyes. Suddenly she flung herself into his arms again, her own locked around his neck and her warm breath falling against his ear. "Merci, Monsieur. Thank you." She kissed his cheek- warm moist lips pressed against his skin.

His arms curled around her, tightly. His eyes closed. His heart stuttered... his body ached.

The door exploded open.

Chantz flung Juliette away as he was hit across the face with the butt of a rifle, spinning him against the wall where he slid to the floor. Beyond the scuffling of feet and the shouting of men's voices, he could hear Juliette screaming. Struggling to sit up, to shake off the pain and the unconsciousness that yawned beneath him, he focused on the blurry face above him, blinked as it grew sharper. Son of a- Tylor Hollinsworth, a wet coil of dark hair spilling over one blue eye, grinned down at him. "I declare, Chantz, I don't know whether to shake your hand or kill you."

"Leave him alone!" Juliette screamed. "He hasn't done anything-"

"On one hand, you've managed to capture my elusive little bird of a fiancee. On the other, I find you with your filthy hands on her body- and her half-naked. What am I to think? A stupid mistake like this could cost you your job, you know, not to mention your life. I can't imagine what Daddy is going to say about this. He won't be happy, as you can well imagine."

Juliette squirmed and kicked at the brute of a man with his arm locked around her waist.

Fiancee? Tylor Hollinsworth's fiancee? Juliette?

Damn. Oh damn.

?Three.

"Will I ever grow accustomed to this heat?"

Juliette paced the length of her bedroom, over the cypress floor blotted with bright rag rugs- peach colored like the paint on the walls. Aside from the heat, the room was surprisingly lovely and comfortable. The bed was tremendous, each one of its four posts bigger than her waist; the beautifully pleated tester had soft, sheer rose-colored curtains tied back with dark green cords and tassels.

As Juliette mopped her throat and chest with a damp cambric kerchief, her temper mounted and her patience grew as frail as the diaphanous mosquito baire draping from the frame over her bed. She wore only a thin shift that adhered to her flesh with sweat and humidity. Pausing at the open French windows, she regarded the terrain of brown water. The distant slave shanties appeared to float on the river, as did the trees and the outbuildings. Hounds sprawled atop their kennels, panting in the heat.

Dear God in Heaven, wasn't it bad enough that Maxwell Hollinsworth had lied about his reasons for bringing her back to Louisiana?

Just exactly how was she supposed to react to the news that Chantz Boudreaux worked as her godfather's overseer? The man had seen her naked as the day she had been born, for heaven's sake. Not only that but she had offered herself to him as flagrantly as the slatterns who entertained the drunken brutes at cockfights. Not only that but she had allowed him liberties. And what discomfited her most, it had come as natural to her as breathing. Even worse... she had enjoyed it. As the Reverend Mother had declared with her fire-and-brimstone promulgations no woman worthy of Heaven would welcome such acts except to beget with her husband and that was allowed only with the greatest indifference to any and all bodily responses.

Obviously, the Reverend Mother had not shared time with Chantz Boudreaux.

Oh how she craved to share time with him again. Lord help her. The tiniest thought of him made her heart race and her mind feel light as goose down.

And that would never do. The very last thing she needed was to allow anything to confuse her reasoning. If she intended to rectify these sorry circumstances in which she found herself, thanks to her naivete, she needed a clear head- and that meant no Chantz Boudreaux...

"Doesn't the wind ever blow in Louisiana?" she demanded as she slapped a mosquito on her arm. "Do these insects ever stop buzzing and biting? I'm going mad, Liza. I swear I am. I thought that dreary cold convent was bad, but I would happily trade a good thrashing from the Mother right now for this deplorable situation in which I'm shackled."

Glaring at the comely mulatto whom Maxwell had assigned as her step-and-fetch-it, Juliette frowned. "Imagine their thinking I would marry Tylor Hollinsworth. I don't know Tylor Hollinsworth, and even if I did I would refuse to marry him on principle. The insufferable brute drunkenly forced himself into my bedroom and, looking me over as if I were a horse to be purchased, announced I am more than fit to marry and mount.

"I know what they want. They want Belle Jarod. They shan't have it. Do you hear me?" she shouted so loudly Liza covered her ears with her hands. "If Tylor Hollinsworth were my last hope for marriage and children I still wouldn't marry him!"

Liza shook her head and raised her eyebrows. She wore a thin gingham dress and a white tignon around her head. Her shoes were bound together by frayed bits of rope. Soft tendrils of dark brown hair fell down her slender neck and around her temples. A sheen of sweat caused her light brown skin to look slightly rosy. Juliette thought her fascinatingly beautiful, like pale chocolate.

"If I's you, Miss Julie, I'd keep my voice down. Max been sweet talkin' his bourbon since dawn. He ain't a man to be crossed even when his mood ain't been soured by mash. I 'spect Tylor is gonna feel the back of his daddy's hand over what he done yestaday, if he ain't already. Now Chantz been dragged into this mess."

Liza plucked the cambric from Juliette's hand and moved to the washstand with a solid marble top, dunked the kerchief into the hand-painted china basin of cool water, gave it a wring, and handed it back to her. The amused expression that had curled her brown lips turned concerned.

Juliette clutched the cloth so tightly a stream of water trickled through her fingers. "Mr. Boudreaux saved my life. He was a perfect gentleman-"

"Miss Julie, Chantz Boudreaux might be a lot of things, but gentleman he ain't. He be ever' gentle-bred woman's daddy's worse nightmare." She chuckled and plumped the feather pillows on Juliette's bed. "Come on now. Ladies nap in the aftanoon. Take away some of this heat."

"I don't want to nap."

"You don't wants to nap. You don't wants to eat. You don't wants to marry Tylor Hollinsworth. What do you wants to do, Miss Julie?"

"I want to go to Belle Jarod, and..."

She pressed the cool cloth to the pulse in her throat, moved again to the window. Black-skinned children splashed through the flood waters, carrying long knives and slapping with sticks at submersed shrubbery.

"What are they doing?" she asked, inviting something other than Chantz Boudreaux to occupy her thoughts, however briefly.

Liza moved up beside her. "Snake huntin'," she said. "Turtle huntin'. Whatever they can scare up."

"Snakes?"

"Big ones. Brought up by the floods. You don't gots to worry much. Maxwell be puttin' young'uns in each room for the next few days to snake watch."

Juliette glanced around the room and bit her lip. "I don't know what appalls me more. The possibility that there could be snakes curling up in my bed or that Maxwell would put children in charge of hunting them."

Grinning, Liza leaned against the window frame and regarded Juliette's profile. "I'm thinkin' you don't wants to talk about snakes at all."

Juliette looked into Liza's eyes that were dark as coffee. How odd it seemed, to be standing here discoursing so freely with another woman. Friendship with other girls had not been encouraged at the convent- especially with her.

"I'm thinkin'," Liza ventured softly, "that you gots Chantz Boudreaux on your mind. You can tell me, Miss Julie. What went on in that shanty with Chantz?"

"Nothing." She shook her head and focused harder on the children as they waded through the muddy water, slapping their sticks at bushes.

"That ain't what Tylor say. He say he found the two of you-"

"It was an innocent embrace, Liza. Nothing more."

Juliette turned away, mopping her nape with the linen. Water ran down her back, making her shiver. She walked to the dressing table and regarded the collection of seedpearl combs for her hair- gifts from Maxwell. They were aged but pretty and had belonged to his wives, as did the silver-backed brush and hand mirror. There was an ornate jewelry box as well. When she opened the lid tinkling music filled the air and on the bed of deep purple velvet were earbobs and bracelets, one of ebony wood carved in the shape of entwined snakes. It had ruby eyes.

Sunlight through the window reflected from the facets of a cut crystal perfume bottle. Lifting the stopper to her nose, she closed her eyes and inhaled the deeply floral scent of sweet magnolia. Something stirred in her memory and in the pit of her stomach. Touching the damp tongue of the stopper to the pulse in her throat, she slid it down to the hollow at the base of her neck.

"Does he have a lady friend?" she heard herself ask.

"Chantz?"

She nodded, drawing the stopper down to the valley between her breasts.

"Women come and go. Chantz got one deep and true love, and that be sugarcane. That man could grow cane outta rock."

Liza joined her. Juliette dipped the stopper tongue back into the perfume, then touched it to the moist skin below Liza's ear. A gold bead of liquid slid down her neck.

"When I still lived with my father, I would occasionally find him sitting in the dark with an open bottle of perfume. He called it Midnight Magnolia, and when I asked him why he had it, he told me that it reminded him of his home in Louisiana. If I lived to be one thousand I would never forget the scent of it. Once, just before he sent me away, I sneaked into his room and took the perfume, dabbed it on my wrists thinking that I would please him. I didn't, of course, because it wasn't Louisiana he thought of when smelling Midnight Magnolia. It was my mother. I think that was the first time he truly looked at me and realized what I had become."

Juliette set the perfume down and walked to the open French doors, turned her face into the sun. The scent of magnolias mingled with that of muddy water and the aroma of cooking food from the kitchen in the distance. She felt tired, suddenly, and dispirited. She wanted to focus her thoughts and feelings on her anger over her godfather's ruse, of having been virtually shanghaied and sold into the slavery of marriage to a man who, on first sight, had repulsed her to the point of nearly throwing herself intentionally into the flooding river.

There were so many problems to sort out- yet her mind continued to shift to those moments the night before, when she had awakened to find herself curled up against a man she had never before witnessed. But even that had not had the effect on her that his touching her had. Something had awakened in her. Something that she had desperately attempted to ignore the last years. His kiss had ignited a fire that even now made her flesh burn and her heart race as if she'd just run as fast as her legs would carry her from the village to the convent, scrambling up stone walls and diving onto her mattress before dawn crept over the horizon.

Liza took her arm. "Best you rest now, Miss Julie. You got dress fittin's later-"

"I don't want those dresses, Liza." Juliette flashed a hard look toward the scattering of brightly colored and extravagant frocks tossed over the backs of chairs. "They belonged to dead women."

"They wasn't dead when they wore 'em."

"What is that?" She pointed to a ribbed contraption with crisscrossed laces.

"That be a corset, Miss Julie. To hold in your waist proper." Liza assessed Juliette and shook her head. "Not gonna do you much good. You not big as a minute anyhow."

"It looks torturous." Juliette shook her head and frowned. "I shan't wear it. I shan't wear those dresses either. Bring me my convent garment."

"You mean that pitiful gray sack of cloth you be wearin' when you come here? Maxwell done burned that quick as you took it off. 'Fraid you gonna be stuck with them lot of frilly rags whether you like it or not."

She followed Liza to the carved four-poster bed draped with sheer net that did little to keep the mosquitoes from her at night. As she sank into the goose-down mattress, Liza tossed a white sheet across her. Juliette reached for her wrist, holding her as she turned to leave.

"Do you have a man friend, Liza?" she asked sleepily, suddenly too tired to care that her question was far too personal and was again leading her back to the very source of mental and emotional conflict that made her unsettled.

Liza smiled a little. "Yes, ma'am. I gots me a fine man, Miss Julie."

"Are you in love?"

She nodded. "I 'spect I am."

"How do you know?"

Liza sat on the bed and regarded Juliette's face. "You just know, I reckon. I suppose when you can't

think of spendin' your time with nobody else. When you feel all filled up with commotion-"

"Has he kissed you?"

"Yes." She nodded, her smile widening and her dark eyes shining like polished onyx.

"Has he...touched you?"

Raising one eyebrow, Liza tipped her head to one side and appeared to consider her question.

"I'm dreadfully brash, aren't I, to ask such a thing when we hardly know each other? Except... I've never

had a friend, Liza. Never a confidante in my entire nineteen years."

"Never?"

"I didn't dare confide in the girls at the convent. The Reverend Mother rewarded anyone who would